TUCKER: Capital punishment can't be 'humane'

11:07 PM,
May 2, 2014

Written by

CYNTHIA TUCKER

In a masterful exercise in understatement, the White House said last week that a botched Oklahoma execution was not carried out in a manner that meets the nation's high standards for such dubious rituals. According to White House press secretary Jay Carney, "We have a fundamental standard in this country that even when the death penalty is justified, it must be carried out humanely."

The ironies abound. When, exactly, is capital punishment "justified"? How does a civilized society carry out executions "humanely"? It's for good reason that most of the modern world has abandoned the death ...